Portfolio

Opportunity doesn’t operate on a 9-5 schedule — it occurs real-time. In a chance meeting outside the office walls, we uncovered a novel concept that could forever change and improve the medical world’s approach to cancer treatment. This one of a kind technology is capable of examining human cells on the biochemical level, offering significant improvements addressing cancer, including earlier detection and more targeted, personalized treatments.

One where you don’t need to see to believe

What pathologists and oncologists need, and what patients deserve, is a tool that lets them know—rather than guess at—what’s going on inside a human’s body. In the war against cancer, reconnaissance is critical to developing an effective plan of attack. Unfortunately, the current approach employed doesn’t give the specialist all the information they need. The medical technology these entrepreneurially doctors are working on, however, assists pathologists and oncologists by eliminating the uncertainty and improving the chances for an effective treatment. Using lasers, the system can quickly and accurately look at the chemical make-up of a cell to not only determine the type and stage of cancer, but exactly what the strain of the particular cancer it is as well. The technology can also determine which cells are going to become cancerous, vastly improving early detection.

The potential is unquestionable, and so are the attributes that make this technology unlike any other cancer screening systems being produced today. But the challenge with any new venture, no matter how novel the product, is finding a way to stand out from the market. We employed a unique approach, and rather than try to go head-to-head with other systems in the current cancer screening technology market, we decided to define a new vertical within the broader category and take the leadership position by being the first ones to market.

Launching Cireca, LLC, Blue Slate assembled a skilled executive level team to put a business plan into place and assist the technology’s developers in moving the concept into the next stage of development; testing. Cireca’s team has already completed a small, 80-slide cancer-screening test where the technology identified cancerous cells with 95% accuracy, in comparison to the 88% accuracy delivered by the pathologists. The team is now evaluating the technology with a 300-slide test, and is currently working with some of the nation’s top cancer centers to develop and implement a collaborative study to further evaluate and validate the technology’s effectiveness.